This week with Brian sees him completing the first of three upcoming marathons in three months. For the most part, I am choosing to leave Brian to his own devices when it comes to preparing for these marathons—as he knows more about running, and I really can’t be bothered. He is (not) paying me to make him a cat three, not a person who runs for 26.2 miles at a time. As an aside, it must say something about runners when their marquee event is based upon a distance covered by a Greek messenger who, upon completing his run to deliver the news of a military victory, promptly dropped dead.
Dead messengers aside, our mission is to decide whether Brian is a runner with a cycling problem or a cyclist with a running problem (either way he ends up with a problem of course), and once we decide that, we can move forward. Until then I am feigning interest in his running activities, as the real training begins on December 21, the day after his last marathon (for 2011 at least).
Tuesday October 4
Gatens Did a commonsense discussion about training just break out in the comment section…
schmalz I doubt jumping up and down will kill you.
Gatens I do agree that jumping up and down won’t kill me and the good news for you is that I’m pretty much taking your advice blindly. It’s still better than the voices inside my head.
Probably going to be on the rollers tonight for an hour or so after the kids go to bed. Kath is away so it’s no biggie to disappear into the basement.
schmalz Tuesday are for 20/10s—you’re welcome.
Gatens I’m thinking of doing 20 or so….sound good?
schmalz It’s your funeral.
Gatens I’m reading the anonymous posters that are coming across on the site and I am sitting here wondering—do you rank above or below the anonymous posters in terms of coaching acumen? I mean I’ve been told to do plyometrics, not do plyometrics, lose weight, ride more, ride less and also to kinda drop dead (I thought my mom forgot the url to nyvc, but nevermind). I’m leaning towards slightly better than you, but that’s me.
schmalz Hey man, I did MATH for you, did any of those anonymous clowns do that?
Gatens Good point on doing the math, but those anonymous guys really seemed to know what they were talking about. They wrote a whole lot and seemed to really care about me. And NONE of them drove by my house with a bullhorn the other night (that was you, right?)
schmalz Are you doubting my Mobile Motivator? You can have the Internet coach you if you want, but it will just end up showing naughty pictures and cat videos.
Wednesday October 5
Gatens Busy day. Running 3 miles at the BF track tonight at 7ish. Probably making it to the rollers at 5 am tomorrow AM.
schmalz Ok try to keep track of your time.
Gatens 4 miles in 30 minutes or so. Moderate intensity. Watched ‘Survivor’. Love that show. If anyone from that show reads the site feel free to send the Survivor Bus to my house and I’d jump right on.
I’d be home 39 days later and a 1,000,000.00 richer. I’d buy the Trexlertown Swap Meet and rename it ‘The Alex Rodriguez (not that one) Swapfest’.
schlego™ duration 1:18
Thursday October 6
Gatens 1 hr. Rollers this morning. 5:00 of 20/10. Nothing good to watch on TV. I was hoping to find some Bourdain to torment you with, but no good.
schmalz Did you do 5 minutes? If you do more than 5 minutes, that’s too long. 8 sets is 4 minutes.
Gatens Yeah 10 sets. Oops, sorry for overachieving.
schmalz Ten is too many—don’t get greedy. You should also rest up for your running thingy this weekend.
Gatens True. Light run tomorrow. I’ll be at a Feis on Saturday so no running. Driving to Albany for the race early Sunday AM.
schlego™ duration 1:00
Saturday October 8
Gatens Ok, so the Yankees game was fun and all and while do I want to believe that standing in center field for four hours has a training benefit of some sort I’m beat going into tomorrow’s marathon.
(This is where you offer pithy and inspirational training advice….go!!!)
schmalz Run until they tell you to stop.
Gatens That’s it? Nothing else. Ok, if you say so.
Sunday October 9
Gatens Stupid hard. I did well for the first half and then the bottom dropped out. I’d give you numbers but they’re not in watts so suffice to say that it took me 4:13. What’s interesting is that it took me 3:14 last year.
At this rate I’ll do it in 1:34 or 1:43 next year. I’d like to chalk the terrible result to my lack of long runs, proper nutrition and adequate sleep. Instead I’ll just blame you.
Thanks for nothing.
schmalz I take neither credit nor blame for any running based activities. I don’t understand them and if I am to be honest, running scares me a little. You run at your own risk.
Gatens The run was on a mixed use bike path and points I did contemplate tackling an oncoming rider and his bike, but then I saw it was a triple and even I have standards.
schmalz The math says you ran the equivalent of about 11 hours of cycling, you might consider taking tomorrow off.
Gatens Good as I feel like I’ve been beaten up.
schmalz Running fever—catch it!
Gatens Going to go collapse into bed now.
schlego™ duration 11:02
schlego™ week duration 12:20
hey Schmalzz how many P’s in
Shut up?
…sez it all. Very Runwayesque. Work it boy!
i don’t understand the (ahem) “intellectual” gymnastics that lead to a marathon being the equivalent of 11 hours on the bike. i thought your conversion was based on calories… a big dude burns maybe 120 calories per mile running, so 3100 calories for a marathon, which is like 3.5 hours of moderate big dude riding.
i agree that in terms of sheer anguish and misery, bonking in a marathon is probably equivalent to several weeks of cycling.
The math:
I’m using Ed Coyle’s assumptions here, of course, Coyle is responsible for this fiasco, so his numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt (he may very well have come up with these numbers while wearing comically oversized shoes and tying balloon animals, but no one else seems to care about these conversion numbers, so it’s all I have).
Let’s go with calories burned per mile, between 15 mph and 20 mph, each additional mile per hour adds 1.4 calories, so at 18 mph, that’s an additional 4.2 calories, making the 18 mph number for calories burned per mile 35.2. Of course, if we average the calories per mile from 10 mph to 30 mph, we get 1.65 calories burned per mile, but I’m thinking that’s a less accurate way to go about it, and I would like to give Brian less credit for each mile ran (because I’m cruel), so let’s go with 1.4 calories per mile.
Now we need to convert this running time into bike time. But first let’s get a more accurate calories per mile number for Brian, as he weighs 185 pounds instead of 155 pounds. If a 155 pound person burns 35.2 calories per mile, then a 185 pound person burns 42 calories per mile (that’s proportionally, this may not be the actual case physiologically, but whatev, I can’t find that information, so let’s go with a proportion here).
Now if Brian rides 18 miles in 60 minutes, he burns 756 calories, running burns 110 calories per mile, so this running mileage equivalent would be 6.87 miles. So an hour of riding for Brian is equal to running 6.87 miles. But we need duration here, because keeping track of mileage is stupid. The result of dividing the hourly mileage pace for bikes by running miles in the same caloric effort is 2.62. So every hour Brian runs is equal to 157 (2 hours 37 minutes) minutes of riding (2.62 x 60). Taa daa!
having done both (bonking on a marathon and on a 8 hour bike ride) I can assure you that running a marathon is nothing like riding a bike for 3.5 hours…schmalz is closer…11 hours seems right
I don’t understand the last part. I’m with you til you say that 60 minutes of riding is equivalent of 6.whatever miles of running… Just under 7 miles of moderate pace running would probably take a decent runner 45-50 minutes. Call it 50 minutes – so he burns in 50 minutes of running what he would burn in 60 minutes of riding. So then what is the “2.62” about?
Brian burns 110 calories per mile running and 42 calories per mile cycling at 18 MPH, 110/42=2.62, so you then multiply running time by 2.62 to get cycling time.
” did contemplate tackling an oncoming rider and his bike, but then I saw it was a triple and even I have standards”
Ha!
Why not have your Cat 4 runner ware a HRM.
He can’t ware one because he doesn’t have one.
Eat lightning and crap thunder.
Let me know if that helps.
An image from W3Schools:
You dear commenter(s?), are my Photoshop angel.
one of s delivering a baby?
One?
The Prospect Park Fall Duathlon would be a great place to put those running AND biking skills to the test.
https://www.lin-mark.com/RaceDetails.aspx?guid=8444f0c1-0e79-4cac-ba41-e66f3c030508
I haven’t run and then gotten on a bike and raced since the cops last chased me, but these events can be a lot of fun.
It is of course a few days before the, ahem, Philadelphia marathon, which Brian may or may not be running.